Day 5
Video of driving the Alaska Highway: https://youtu.be/sHhDXKKwNes
Short drive today, only 282 miles, 1,698 so far.
I spent the morning in church with a little congregation of 50 in attendance. It was fun associating with them and learning some "Canadian", like "aboot" for "about", "sory" for "sorry", "oat" for "out", "clicks" for "kilometers", and a lot of "eh?" at the end of sentences. Of course, they treated me like a celebrity since I sang in what President Reagan called "America's Choir", the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and just because of the car that had come such a long way in so short a time. One of the members gave me two buckets of fresh honey from his hives, one for someone he promised one to in the town next to mine and one for me. He said the "Peace Valley" honey was world renown as the best honey in the world. So, I didn't get on the road until almost 3:00 p.m.
The rest of my journey began at mile marker 0 smack dab in the middle of Dawson Creek, the official and historical beginning of the Al-Can highway that, as the sign says, runs 1,523 miles to Fairbanks.
Then we were back out on the road through the wilderness.
Eventually, we were driving through an area of forest fire with fire not far from the road. It really hazed everything over. The smell of the burning trees was, of course, very strong.
It colored the sunlight orange that turned the light colors in our interior more orange.
Our lowest elevation today was 312 meters, or 1,023 feet.
Something I forgot to mention about the lower elevation yesterday is the very pleasant surprise of a boost of power in the engine. It was especially noticeable when climbing hills and accelerating. I almost envied all of you that get to drive flatheads near sea level all the time.
No, it wasn't that extra power used for a burst of speed that lead to this.
I stopped at this spot to take a picture of this stretch of road. As I usually do to get this kind of shot, I walked back up hill a couple hundred feet for the shot. Then, I saw this truck coming the other direction and decided to wait until it passed so I wouldn't have to Photoshop it out. Well, as it got closer and closer it got slower and slower until it looked like it was going to stop when it turned on its overhead police lights, did a U-turn, and pulled up behind the car. I was so far up the hill from the car that he didn't even know I was there. I was certainly curious what he was going to do next. Get out and ask little Lady for her license? Of course, she would be able to give it to him because she has no opposing thumb to take it off of her collar.
But, he just sat there for the longest time while I got this and other pictures of him. Eventually, he got out and headed up to my car. I yelled down at him, "Hey, I'm trying to take a picture and you're in the way." He was pretty startled to turn around and see me way back there. He was immediately apologetic, jumped in his truck, did a U-turn, drove up to across the road from me, got out with his camera and came over for my photography lesson about the great picture that can be taken under those circumstances. Of course, he had some fancy huge DSLR camera, and to get anything like the pictures I took with my little point a shoot had to go back to his truck and get his long telephoto lens and put it on his camera. We had a nice visit, he went on his way, and I finally got the picture I stopped to get.
Of course, the bugs continued to pile on.
When we got to Fort Nelson, I knew we were about two hundred miles behind our schedule, not that it was too big a deal, but I've scheduled two extra "emergency days" in the itinerary in case I have to sit and wait for a part to be flown in or something and don't really want to use it up lolly-gagging. It was only 9:00 and the sun was still shining. So, I wanted to do another hour to get a little further along. But, we're to the point now that civilization with accommodations, or even gas, are much further apart. There was no place to stay or camp for 100 miles further along. My body was telling me it was actually an hour later by my home time so we got us a nice tent site in the RV park and set up camp for the night. I figured if I could get this report done at night we could hit the road real early in the morning and make up some miles.
For anyone interested, here's the extra battery in the trunk with the black clamp on the negative post, the same as the other end is on the car battery under the hood, and the red clamp on the positive post.
Then in just a few seconds, I move the black clamp to the positive post, clamp the red clamp to the positive clamp from the inverter, and clamp the inverter's negative clamp to the negative post on the battery. With the two 6 volt batteries now in series with my 400 watt inverter, I have a huge amount of 12 volt power to run and charge everything all night and still plenty to start the car in the morning.
My bedroom and work space for reporting.
If you look close you can see the cord running from the trunk to the tent.
I was hoping to get to Skagway tomorrow but won't likely make the 638 miles we have left. But, we'll make up some time, then get there early the next day, get my sticker to say I did, and head back for home.